The institution of the Eucharist also contained an allusion733733 The
last promise, also, Matt.. xxviii., 20, presupposes such fuller explanations as
those which we find recorded by John in these discourses. to the promise that he
would be with his disciples as truly after his departure as he had been during
his corporeal presence. And as he knew that their minds were not yet entirely
free from carnal and unspiritual views, he gave occasion for them to express
themselves freely, in order to give them clearer ideas by means of their very
misunderstandings.

“Whither I go,” said he, “ye know; and the way ye know.”
Still, the death of Messiah was a hard conception for them; a miraculous removal
from the earth would have accorded better with their feelings.
396Thomas,734734 Thomas displays the same character here as in his
subsequent doubts concerning Christ’s resurrection. It is wholly incredible that
the author of John’s Gospel, who obviously was little capable of assuming
different characters, should have invented such a one. who seems to have
remained in bondage to sense more than any of the others, said to him, “Lord, we know not whither thou
goest; and how can we know the way?” The Saviour, in his reply, inverts the
order; if they had known the “way,” they would have known the “whither:”
“I am
the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye
had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” (Had they better known
Him,
through whom the Father reveals and communicates himself, they would have known
better all the rest.) The three conceptions in this passage are closely
connected together. He designates himself not merely as the guide, but as the
Way itself; and that because he is himself, according to his nature and life,
the Truth; the truth springing from the Life; because he is, in himself, the
Source of the Divine Life among men, as well as the personal manifestation of
the Divine Truth. He is, therefore, the Way, inasmuch as mankind, by communion
of Divine life with him, receive the truth, and are brought by it into
union with the Father. He that knows him, therefore, knows the Father also. “And from
henceforth ye know him, and have seen him;” i. e., after their long intercourse
with Christ, they were now, at least, to see and recognize the Father in him.

But Philip, still on the stand-point of sense, applied these words to a
sensible
theophany, as a sign of the Messianic era: “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” This misunderstanding led Christ
again to impress upon their minds
the same truth, that whoever obtained a just spiritual intuition of Him saw the
Father in Him; the Father, with whom He lived in inseparable communion, and who
manifested himself in His words and works (v. 9, 10, 11). But these works, and
the manifestation of God in them, were not to remain to the disciples something
merely external. Whoever believed on him was, through his fellowship, to become
an organ of his continued Divine working for the renewal of the life of mankind;
the aim of his whole manifestation was to do yet greater things than he had
done:735735 Cf. the excellent
remarks of Kling, Stud. u. Krit., 1836, iii., 684. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that
I do shall he do also; and yet greater works than these shall he do.”736736 Cf. p. 184, 358.

And the source of all this power was to be, in his own words,
“Because I go unto my
Father;” they were to gain it precisely by that separation, the prospect of
which then filled them with grief and sorrow. When he should go to the Father,
and remove from them the visible, human, and, therefore, limited form of his
manifestation, as a source of dependance, then would he, as the glorified one,
work invisibly from
397heaven in them, and among them, with Divine power.
And therefore it was that, through communion of the Divine life with him, they
were to “ do yet greater things than these.”

733 The
last promise, also, Matt.. xxviii., 20, presupposes such fuller explanations as
those which we find recorded by John in these discourses.

734 Thomas displays the same character here as in his
subsequent doubts concerning Christ’s resurrection. It is wholly incredible that
the author of John’s Gospel, who obviously was little capable of assuming
different characters, should have invented such a one.